Sharon Dolmans

Sharon Dolmans is an Associate Professor of Collaborative Technology Commercialization and Societal Impact at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). Her main research interests revolve around collaborative technology commercialization towards societal impact in public and private contexts. 

Key enabling technologies such as photonics, quantum and AI hold the potential to enable and contribute to solutions for our societal challenges in a broad range of areas such as climate change and energy, ICT, security and safety, mobility and logistics, agri-food and healthcare. However, guiding technology development toward unleashing that potential societal impact is not straightforward. It requires challenging collaborative technology commercialization processes to transform key enabling technologies into output of societal value, where engaging and co-creating with societal stakeholders is essential to achieving societally-aligned, responsible and impactful innovation. To that end, Sharon’s research aims to to better understand how to bridge the perspectives and knowledge domains of technology experts and societal actors to facilitate mutual understanding, collaboration, co-creation, acceptance, and adoption of key enabling technologies towards societal impact. In view of this mission, she enjoys collaborating with public and private stakeholders to co-create unique, innovative and impactful research projects. In her research, she typically combines her fascination for technology and collaboration with her passion for qualitative research to generate new theoretical insights that also prove valuable to practitioners, policymakers, and society. 

Sharon currently leads the NWA FIQCS project (Fieldlab Quantum Cryptography Solutions for a Safe Society) to understand and guide the societal impact of quantum technology. She is also a workpackage leader in the HORIZON EIC Pathfinder CIRCULIGHT project (Circulating Light On Any Photonic Platform) pursuing collaborative innovation and co-creation with industrial and societal stakeholders to guide the development of the novel circulator technology towards societal impact.